Fallow

The creek was the first thing I could remember. The soothing song of water trickling over stone. The sparkle of light dancing on the liquid surface.

And Daisy.

When I first saw her, she was such a little thing. She crouched on the bank, her legs folded like a resting bird, weaving a flower crown to adorn her golden head. I had just weaned from my mother’s side, quivering with the first lonely feelings of being apart.

Daisy lifted her strange and soft human hoof to me. It was a fleshy limb that split off into five little branches. She beckoned me and I stepped closer. Daisy pet me with her pale hoof, delicate but sure. She smelled foreign. Not like moss or earth or mama. But she was alone like me and that mattered more.

I was years older when I came to understand that she smelt of berries and salt and smoke.

Seasons passed by like a soft breeze and I grew to love my strange little Daisy.

In summer I sank into shadowed groves, my coat sleek and warm. I woke to a berry red sunset bleeding across the sky. My antlers had begun budding from my skull with an incessant itch. I lept with other deer through misty meadows. Our hooves drummed a beat of joy and freedom. In spring, I drank dew that clung like ticks to the grass. With my brothers, I enjoyed the soft chew of ferns between my teeth.

Autumn brought with it the first winds of colder days. Winter taught me hunger and patience, the long ache of frost biting at my belly.

And always, she came back.

My Daisy.

She knelt by the creek, she had grown over the years but so had I. Daisy had hair like sunshine and strange flat teeth that glittered when she was happy. Her hair was twisted in a ring of light, her knees muddy from resting. Somehow, Daisy seemed even smaller now.

Daisy had brought strange foods wrapped in soft skins, breaking them open to share their treasures. That day it was apples. They were soft and ripe — juicer than young acorns. I chewed slowly, savouring the treat. I marvelled also at how her jaws did not work sideways but instead up and down.

Everything about her was distinct. When she touched me, her skin was warm and bare with no fur to protect her. No hooves to drum the earth. She was as fragile as a fawn and yet she moved through life with certainty.

As I leaned into her touch, I felt a sense of wonder at the strength of my strange friend. Perhaps she felt it too. She often lingered, gazing into my eyes and talking to me in her odd human sounds.

Over time, the clipped music of her human tongue became familiar, comforting. I did not understand her noises as she meant me to but I felt them. I knew their intentions. Sometimes gentle as new grass, sometimes bubbling like creekwater. Sometimes low and secret like the eyes that watch from behind the trees at night. She told me endless stories even though their meanings were almost all lost on me.

Her voice felt like warm rain on dry soil.

Once, I watched her dance in the meadow. Her arms outstretched, her hair played in the breeze. She twirled like a bird caught between earth and sky and choosing both.

Over the years, my stride grew heavy. I had become weighed down by knowledge and loss. Foxes in the underbrush. The sharpness of winter’s bite. And men, carrying thunder, who had begun wandering closer and closer to my home. I had learned to keep a distance from the smell of smoke, and from the sharp iron tang that lingered after the stormless thunder. But Daisy had come before the fear.

My antlers stretched wider each year, my strength displayed in muscle and bone. When my rut came, I clashed with my brothers. The forest shook with our thunder. Antler against antler, and we were stronger for it.

One summer, I found her weeping into the water. Her shoulders shook, her voice broken into a sound no bird or beast to recreate. I moved closer, lowering my head to her. She had wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face in my coat. I felt her hot tears sink into my fur. I could not know what had hurt Daisy but I could make sure she wasn’t alone.

I carried the heaviness of her sorrow in my heart long after she left.

Another spring, she had arrived in a crown of daisies and held more in her soft human hooves. She pressed a bloom against my nose and I sneezed, sparking her laughter. The sound startled me. It was not like the cry of a jay or coyote. Her laugh was a tumbling, bumbling thing that ruffled the leaves. I had never known a creature so different.

We were creatures from different worlds, but when we shared these moments — just the two of us — that didn’t matter.

Until the Fall when she came with another.

A man, broad-shouldered, carrying a stick of thunder.

I froze in the clearing. Daisy saw me first. Her water gaze met mine and, for a heartbeat, I let myself believe she had only come to see me. Like all the times before. Maybe she was only looking to share more of her world with mine. But then the man handed her the thunderstick. She raised it to her shoulder.

The world shattered before me.

I fell, the forest spinning in my descent. My body became so heavy. My breath escaped in broken gasps. Daisy stood over me, her face pale. Petal pink lips pressed into a line, trapping the human song she once shared so freely.

Later, I would hand above their fire, stripped of flesh, left with only bone and memories. My grand antlers cast wide shadows across the room where they laughed and told each other stories. I watched over her with her humans, she had never been alone.

I had always wondered at her difference, her strangeness, her beauty. I had always thought of her as a friend, my first friend. And perhaps she was, until the moment came when she would have to prove she was human.